Prevention and treatment are priorities, but experts say alternatives to opiante painkillers important as well

Morgan True

Sitting in the office at the Edwina Martin sober living house, treatment experts Donna McDade and Judith McDonough told the story of a young woman they found overdosing just off Main Street 18 months ago.

“We came around the back of one property and there was a girl overdosing underneath the back porch,” McDonough said.

McDade tried to rouse her while McDonough called 911.

“She heard the ambulance coming and started trying to get up,” recalled McDonough. “She didn’t want them taking her off her high.”

When the ambulance did arrive they administered nolaxone, a nasal spray effective at reversing the effects of opiates.

“This young girl looked like she’d been in the streets; she looked rough,” said McDade. “But once she was revived, her eyes got real big. She took the pin out of her hair and this long beautiful strawberry blond hair fell down to her back.”

“In my heart I was like ‘this is someone’s daughter,’” she said.

In Brockton there are an average of 17 opiate overdoses per month, according to figures collected by first-responders. Reports show heroin overdoses claim a life once every eight days on the South Shore, and eastern Massachusetts has the highest incidence of heroin- and opiate-related emergency room visits in the U.S.

Those are some of the reasons Gov. Deval Patrick announced last week that $1.3 million in federal grant funding would be dispersed though 13 lead municipalities to fight opiate abuse. The grants target 71 communities in all.

Brockton will handle the grant for neighboring East Bridgewater, Rockland and Whitman. The city could receive as much as $700,000 over the next seven years to bolster the work of local organizations. Department of Public Health spokeswoman Anne Roach said the state is writing guidelines for how the money should be used, and Brockton Mayor Linda Balzotti said once those are in hand the city will find someone to manage the grant.

Much of the problem stems from the use – then misuse – of prescription painkillers among youth. Schoolyard accidents or dental procedures introduce teens to pain medication. Those prescriptions become a gateway to illegal prescription drug use and eventually street drugs, according to treatment workers and medical experts.

“Young people are starting out taking OxyContin and ending up with a needle in their arm,” McDade said.

“Once they’re addicted they need treatment, because if they don’t get it they’re going to die,” she said. “They’re going to die vicious, and they’re going to die young.”

The epidemic was first reported in 2007 by The Enterprise’s “Wasted Youth” series of stories, which chronicled the lives of several area addicts.

An array of treatment and prevention groups are working to slow the deadly trend. Local organizations such as Highpoint Treatment Center, Brockton Area Multi-Services C.O.P.E Center, Edwina Martin House, and Learn to Cope, as well as many others already work with the city, police, first-responders and the district attorney’s office to prevent overdoses and support recovery.

One focus is educating people about how an overdose occurs and why naloxone, commonly known as Narcan, is a powerful stopgap against the rise of overdoses. An opiate overdose overwhelms the brain and interferes with breathing. Squirting a dose of naloxone relieves the strangling effect, killing the heroin high and stopping the overdose.

As of December 2012, a statewide program had trained and provided more than 16,000 people with naloxone, and the Department of Public Health said it had received 1,700 reports of reversals.

There are now 16 sites that distribute kits with the drug to people over age 18 who complete a class.

Three in southeastern Massachusetts – in Brockton, Fall River and Quincy – accounted for 30 percent of the naloxone distributed and nearly 19 percent of reversals at that time.

Some of the recently announced federal prevention money could be spent to expand such classes, but many would like to see less opiate-based painkillers being prescribed.

“Someone has to be held accountable for that, whether it’s the doctors or the pharmaceutical companies, because the young women we work with are dying because of it,” McDade said.

Some of the blame lies with insurance companies, which foster the overuse of prescription painkillers, according to Barbara Herbert, chief of Addiction Services at St. Elizabeth Medical Center in Brighton.

“Health insurance is more likely to pay for prescriptions than to pay for extensive physical therapy or alternative treatments like acupuncture, which has been proven to work, but often are more expensive,” she said.

In the longer term, Herbert said researchers are looking for ways to identify those genetically predisposed to opiate addiction, which would allow prescribers to better measure proper doses.

Until then, prevention education, community outreach and naloxone are among the best available tools. The idea is to reduce first-time users and keep those addicted alive long enough to get clean, according to treatment workers.

When that happens there needs to be support services, said McDonough, so those in recovery can get a fresh start.

“You’ve got to teach people to be self-sufficient” after regaining sobriety, she said, “so they feel capable of rebuilding their lives.”

Morgan True may be reached at mtrue@enterprisenews.com. Cole Chapman is a reporter in the Boston University Statehouse program.